Kunuk hopes film breaks down barriers to funding

MIRIAM HILL

Award-winning filmmaker Zacharias Kunuk hopes the success of his feature film, Atanarjuat, will make it easier to obtain funding for future projects.

Kunuk, in Iqlauit on his way home to Igloolik, said Igloolik Isuma Productions, the company that made the film, had a battle on its hands when it tried to get funding.

“We went through hell and we don’t want to go through that route again,” he said. Now that his name is recognized around the world, some have said it will be easier to get funding for his next project. “But I hope we iron a lot of things out. It was not easy,” he said.

The film, which is the first feature film made in Inuktitut using an Inuit cast and crew, cost $1.96 million to make and received funding from the National Film Board and Telefilm Canada.

It has won several major awards in the past year, including the prestigious Camera d’Or award for first-time directors at the International Cannes Film Festival in France last spring.

Kunuk said the biggest funding issue he faced was being categorized not as a Canadian filmmaker, but as an aboriginal one, and he and the production company fought it “barrier by barrier.”

“It was our first-time experience with this film funding scenario and since English is dominant, they get the biggest budget. The second is French and what is left is aboriginal,” he said. “We’re just fighting as we are tax-paying Canadians and want to make films like any other Canadians.”

Kunuk was on his way home after a spectacular evening at the Genie Awards in Toronto last week. The event honours the best of Canadian film.

Atanarjuat won five out of seven awards it was nominated for: best motion picture, best director, best screenplay, best sound and best editing. Kunuk also won the Claude Jutra award for best feature film.

While thrilled with the accolades, Kunuk admitted he was disappointed that none of the actors in the film were nominated for Genies. “Our film did so great and it was the actors that made it great,” he said.

Kunuk said he hopes the success of Atanarjuat will open the door to funding for his next project — the story of the man named Ava.

This man had a strange coat, Kunuk explained, and the story tells how he got it. The film, he hopes, will again mix traditional stories with new, tackle the coming of the church and the breaking up of families.

But filming won’t start for another two years, while he and Isuma search for funding.

Atanarjuat was not nominated in the best foreign-language feature category of the this year’s Academy Awards, and while Kunuk said he would go to the awards ceremony March 24 if it were, the man is pretty busy these days.

He has been invited to attend an aboriginal film festival in Australia at the beginning of March and is debating whether to go.

“I’ve been avoiding overseas travel,” he said. “Cannes was a culture shock for me. The madness, and everybody in competition.”

But one thing is for sure. He said he has to be in Nunavut for the Arctic Winter Games being held in Iqaluit March 17 to 23.